I'm confused. Because aren't people in Chicago, NY, LA, Minneapolis, Dallas, wherever also doing formats? If Austin is 'format-centric' does that just mean we put a greater emphasis on formats while in Chicago they put an emphasis on character (or whatever)?

I understand that maybe the opposite of doing a precise format would be doing a loose show where the format is discovered, but that's not what everyone in other cities is doing, right? Because to me, and maybe I misread the initial question, that's what was being asked about...right?

At the end of the day, I'd come down on the side of it's too hard to generalize about big cities and their improv.

What Jill said. I guess you could argue that Chicago is Harold-centric, but because the definition of a Harold is so loose, those shows feels very different from a show in which, say, you're going to see Improvised William Burroughs or whatever. Just as important from the audience's point of view, those shows for the most part aren't marketed as Harolds; they're just improv. Whereas it seems like the vast majority of shows in Austin have some kind of hook or premise, often connected to an already-existing work, that creates (and hopefully meets) certain expectations.